What do you think happen after we die ?

unknown really, who knows maybe reincarnation exists maybe not

I remember, quite well, the week that I stopped believing in god and the afterlife, the week I became an atheist. I read "Abrief History of Time" by Hawking. He described his infinite no boundary condition for the creation of the universe; that asking what came before the universe is like asking what is north of the north pole.

It was the answer to the cosmological argument I had always needed. I spent the rest of that week really staring down my own mortality.

In hindsight, I now realise religion is a crutch. It stops you dealing with death. A distraction.

I am fine with my own finiteness now. I feel ok with it. I dont know what to tell you. I'm ok with it. It doesnt make make me feel anything. Hell, It would make me feel happy to be dead when someone were reading these words; I'd love for someone to read my words after I was gone.

Well yeah, we don't know. That doesnt make fairy tales like paradise, heaven, nirvana, or reincarnation at all likely. Is it baseless speculation to philosophise about a magical place where the imprint of bicycles go after they have been destroyed, so that new owners may ride them again? You cant prove that it doesnt happen, but it doesnt make it less asinine.

Consciousness is just arbitrarily defined. There's nothing to suggest that stars and atoms aren't conscious in an abstract sort of way.

People are dying all the time, but I still perceive consciousness. Are you by any chance a one the retards who think that consciousness = soul and that everybody has their own unique little completely inaccessible world(despite it being a literal paradox)?

err, this sentence doesnt make sense. Could you read through, fix the grammar, and repost?

OP's post doesn't make sense either. Why don't you complain about that? It's just a string of vague terms that don't make sense together no matter what definitions are used.

Your last moment of consciousness may subjectively extend your experience for a long time. Perhaps it would be like an extended dream or vague sensation.

You're still dead of course.

Hang on, OP's post reads

>What do you think happen after we die ?

Whats not to understand?

>People are dying all the time, but I still perceive consciousness. Are you by any chance a one the retards who think that consciousness = soul and that everybody has their own unique little completely inaccessible world(despite it being a literal paradox)?

I cant even begin to decipher that.

It all happens again in 10^10^10^56 years or something like that.

Big sleep senpai-a-lam

This is why I'm not going to reproduce.
This world fucking sucks.

Except it's obvious that the mind isn't a function of the physical brain, it's the other way around, the brain is a function of the mind.

*Pop pop pop*

You're one dead-ass honkey, motherfucker.

OP is asking an obvious question that isn't actually his real question, which is a sign of either being an autist or a troll.

No-one knows what happens after you die dude, the answer isn't 'obvious' it's unknowable.

Enlighten us then oh sage. What is OP actually asking, as opposed to what he wrote?

A body decomposes after death. This isn't the real question.

I'm not a mind reader.

>A body decomposes after death
What about the mind?

>inb4 "hurf durf the physical brain gives rise to the mind"

Schopenhauer pls

Define "mind".

>inb4 "hurf durf the physical brain gives rise to the mind"

Putting hurf durf before an argument does not invalidate it.

Physical monism invalidates itself

we don't know much about death
we don't even know what death is, or at least we don't know how to define it in terms of time, there is no moment when a person dies
people can be revived in various ways within a short enough timeframe
it's more of a process than a state

Go on . . .

Do you think if we ever fully mapped out the brain and understood all interactions perfectly we'd be able to create a mathematical formula that describes the sensation of warmth you feel when you stand in the Sun? Qualia can never be described by the scientific method because the scientific method focuses solely on phenomena that can be quantified and subjective experience is a qualitative phenomenon. It can certainly explain how the heat activates nerves that travel up to the brain and deliver the data about the temperature to the brain, but it can't explain or describe the subjective experience of feeling warmth.

Its easy to say that before we've mapped out the brain. How the hell would you know? We havent done it yet. It may well be the case that their really is an empirical description of the feeling of warmth. At any rate, that still doesnt rescue dualism.

>Humans cannot will their brain into the same activity pattern as the one displayed by a hologram, therefore qualia exists
Mary's room has already been solved. Qualia no longer has any logical arguments for its existence.

>It may well be the case that their really is an empirical description of the feeling of warmth
You think that one day people will be able to read in their textbooks some explanation of why people feel warmth and that would translate into giving them the knowledge of exactly what the feeling warmth is like? The idea is absurd. Just like reading everything about the electromagnetic spectrum will never give you knowledge of exactly what the color red looks like without actually experiencing it. You can understand intellectually that the color red is the longest visible wavelength but that doesn't tell you anything about what red actually looks like in reality.

>The claustrum is a thin, irregular, sheet of neurons that is attached to the underside of the neocortex in the center of the brain. It is suspected to be present in the brains of all mammals.

>The claustrum is a fraction of a millimetre to a few millimetres deep and is a vertical curved sheet of subcortical gray matter oriented sagittally between the white matter tracts of the external capsule and extreme capsule. The claustrum is lateral to the putamen and medial to the insular cortex and is considered by some sources to be part of the basal ganglia. There are lateral and medial tracts connecting the claustrum to many parts of the cortex and perhaps to the hippocampus, the amygdala, and the caudate nucleus (connections with subcortical centers are a matter of debate).

>One of the interesting features of the claustrum is the uniformity in the types of cells, indicating a uniform type of processing by all claustral neurons. Though organized into modality specific regions, the claustrum contains a great deal of longitudinal connections between its neurons that could serve to synchronize the entire anterior-posterior extent of the claustrum.[1] Francis Crick and Christof Koch have compared the claustrum to the conductor of an orchestra, referring to its regulatory role in consciousness and cognition.[2] The different parts of the cortex must play in harmony or else the result is a cacophony of sounds instead of a beautiful symphony. The claustrum may be involved in widespread coordination of the cerebral cortex, using synchronization to achieve a seamless timescale between both the two cortical hemispheres and between cortical regions within the same hemisphere, resulting in the seamless quality of conscious experience.

>Mary's room has already been solved
Wrongo.

Makes perfect sense considering the mind gives rise to the brain.

Actually, you've written elsewhere that physical monism is self defeating. Lets say I accept your premise, that science cant describe the feeling of warmth, or other such qualia. We still cant get from there to dualism. There are many other questions on which sciences is quiet, for example Hume's problem of induction; science cannot actually prove that science itself works. It absolutely does not follow that there is a substance, mind, that is seperate from your body, that goes on to live apart from that body after death.

Take, for example, brain damage. There is no part of the mind that cannot be damaged by damaging part of the brain; damage the brain in just the right way and a person would lose the qualia of warmth.

It may well be that we will never understand what gives rise to said qualia, but it doesnt follow that mind exists as anything other than something the brain does.

The more I read of your posts, the more problems I see with what you're saying. I literally dont have time to answer all the errors in one post. You give snappy one liners like "monism is self defeating", which take us 1000 words to challenge.

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest you've never passed first year uni, the arguments you make are fairly typical of a person who doesnt have to submit themselves to peer review. Or are you a fan of Deepak Chopra?

Human limitations cannot be used to justify qualia. This is literally the post above yours.

That post is wrong however. Qualia is still an issue no matter how badly pure physicalists want to sweep it under the carpet.

>muh feelings cnt be calculated u inconsiderate drone!! DD:
>IM A HUMAN BEAN, YEA?!!!!

The mind is the problem where science hits a dead end. Because science is purely interested in quantitative phenomenon it will never be able to explain qualitative phenomenon like subjective experience. That's just the way it is.

This post is exactly what I'm talking about. It's not an argument, its a statement. Science hits a dead end at the mind? Sure wish I had that crystal ball of yours. Cognitive science is an ongoing area of research, that publishes new results all the time, and is moving in on the inner mechanisms of the human psyche. I mean, I hate writing answers that amount to a simple "you're wrong" but I don't know what else to do here. You havent said anything substantive.

Incidentally both Dan Dennett and steven Pinker have written on this supposed "hard problem of conciousness". Both of them write the same thing, that conciousness isn't a single monolithic entity, but a collection of modules, themselves made up of simpler modules, which eventually get so simple they can be farmed out to basic neural mechanisms. You're welcome to shoot them an email and take the issue up with them, as I understand it, Pinker is available at his email address at MIT, and I am currently unsure about Dennett. A simple google search should reveal his contact details.

And what is your justification for that statement? How does Mary's demon, who is able to look at a model of a photon and imagine the color red despite living in a completely dark room its entire life, not defeat your argument?

What else can I say? If you ever think that there will be a description of phenomena that lets the person who understands that description intuitively understand what that phenomena feels like in reality then you're wrong. If you ever think science can explain a purely quantitative thing such as subjective experience via quantitative methodology then you're wrong. You're the one clinging to a spurious idea that 'We'll understand it one day' without understanding that consciousness is different to every other scientific question because it is the very thing that every other scientific inquiry seeks to eliminate from the equation.

>How does Mary's demon, who is able to look at a model of a photon and imagine the color red
This doesn't happen.

Are all these posts by the same user? I'm seeing a pattern here; a tendency to assert rather than argue.

>Qualia is still an issue no matter how badly pure physicalists want to sweep it under the carpet.

Just because you say it, don't make it true. Why? What makes qualia an issue? Why isn't qualia something the brain does, like making force something that an engine does?

What do you think happens to a computer program if you break the computer?

>I'm right, and it working that that way would prove me wrong, therefore it doesn't work that way.

then whats the real life version of
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_protection

Because if you adequately explain subjective experience then the description should convey everything about that subjective experience to the point where the description allows the person reading it to intuitively understand what it is like to feel that subjective experience themselves. Impossible. You're being obtuse. Actual scientists acknowledge the problem, you need to settle down and realize it too.

>The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove the revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spaciotemporal qualities such as size, shape and motion and the laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances on the other hand -- how this world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind and the secondary qualities like sound, color and smell were to be analyzed relationally in terms of the power of physical things acting on the sense, to produce those qualities in the minds of the observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract human subjective experiences and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world to permit this powerful but austere conception of objective spaciotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop

- Thomas Nagel

In other words, science cannot describe the mind because the mind is something that science deliberately ignores in order to adhere to a concept of an objective physical reality.

>Impossible.
Guess language is totally useless then.

I'm right because you've provided absolutely no evidence that intellectually knowing about the properties of red light allows an intuitive understanding of what it is like to experience seeing red light.

>Actual scientists acknowledge the problem, you need to settle down and realize it too.

I'm not even mad. Trust me. If I settled down any further I'd be asleep.

Actual Scientists like Pinker, as alluded to elsewhere, seem to do anything but acknowledge the proble. Actual Scientists like Sam Harris acknowledge the problem but see it as surmountable. A single quote from Thomas Nagel does not a consensus make.

At any rate, this is an improvement on your previous posts, where you have actually made an argument.

Strawmanning hard now. Language is important for conveying concepts to other people. The fact that you can't really know in realities how a person is subjectively feeling if they say "I feel happy today" doesn't prevent you from linking those concepts with your own experience of happiness. But again, if you think that is a good point you're either strawmanning or don't understand the problem.

Because no part of the brain is storing copies of neuron patterns. Don't be stupid.

The point is that science deliberately ignores subjective experience to describe the world in objective, quantifiable terms. Say I cut a triangle out of steel. Science is only concerned with the properties of that triangle that are objective and can be proven. It has three sides, it is made out of steel, it is 5cm on every side, etc. How that triangle feels to hold, is completely irrelevant, it's not an issue. If one person says the surface is smooth and another says it is rough how do you determine objectively whether it is one or the other? It's an issue that science completely chooses to ignore for the greater good of being able to understand things in objective terms and this is good and completely fine.

But you see the issue where science ignores subjective experience it cannot be used to explain it. You can't quantify the experience of doing, knowing, feeling things. You can quantify how those qualities might be propagated within the structure of the brain, but as to how they are to the person actively experiencing those things it cannot.

Mary's demon is able to imagine what an apple looks like when given all the information about apples, and this is evident when, upon seeing an apple for the first time, the demon gains no additional knowledge about the appearance of apples.

Something is communicated, which is all that matters. The idea of subjective experience is built upon the idea of private information, but the information isn't private if it can be communicated. It doesn't matter if the communication is imperfect.

>If one person says the surface is smooth and another says it is rough how do you determine objectively whether it is one or the other?
That's just semantics.

>Mary's demon is able to imagine what an apple looks like when given all the information about apples
Nope. Unless you want to give me a description of green that allows me to perfectly perceive it in my mind then you are incorrect.

HUMAN LIMITATIONS CANNOT BE USED TO JUSTIFY QUALIA

> If one person says the surface is smooth and another says it is rough how do you determine objectively whether it is one or the other?

Remember the point of this thread was life after to death, which leads naturally to monism vs dualism. How does the disagreement of two individuals on the smoothness and roughness of a surface get you to the existence of a separate substance, mind, which floats off ones body after death to continue existing as a conciouss entity?

Yes they can. Nice try though, the way you tried to say authoritative when you have jack shit to support your argument that you could allow a blind person to 'perceive' color with a braille description.

>Which leads naturally to monism vs dualism
Both are wrong. Idealism is correct.

retard alert. Brains don't have off-site backup drives or a way to download information to them, and even if they did the consciousness being produced by the brain would cease once it was destroyed, the backup would simply be a copy.

The sooner I can find out, the better.

First post here, help me out.

Say there's a clear physical correspondence between a color and a particular brain structure.
Say, thanks to (entirely made up)
*-*--- neurons you can see RED and without the
*---*- neurons you can see GREEN.
We have a bijection between the experience of a color and the structure itself.
Photons hit the eye and somewhat *-*--- light up making see you RED.
We have the photons and we have the neurons.
Where the fuck is RED though?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_centre

>without the
thanks to.

>Where the fuck is RED though?
In the mind

Dualism is the idea that a human is made of two substances, matter and mind. Monism is the idea that there is only matter, and mind is what that matter does, i.e., mind is something the brain does. One of them has to be correct. Either mind is a magical thing that is separate to the body, or it is not.

As far as I can see, the existence of specific brain damage is the killer argument. By damaging the brain, we can damage the mind. A stroke can remove ones ability to feel warmth or read the printed word. The reverse, a damage to the mind, does not effect the brain. I don't grow lesions on my cerebellum every time i lose an argument.

Ergo, the brain effects the mind. As the mind does not effect the brain, it doesnt exist as a separate entity.

Moreso, by directly interactign with the brain, we can not only induce compulsions in subjects, but actually induce *wants* in subjects, while the subjects themselves feel as if they made those decisions or felt those feelings entirely on their own with no outside influence. This shows that not only is the body controlled by the brain, but the mind is controlled by the brain as well, and indeed is an entity entirely made up of processes occurring throughout the brain.

The mind creates the brain, not the other way around. It's not dualism, all reality is a mental construct.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism

>As the mind does not effect the brain
This is false. It's possible to rewire your brain by changing your mental state. You can change your brain by force of will, that is definitely the mind effecting the brain.

this guy gets it

Then qualia isn't a problem because we will eventually pass those limitations and qualia will disappear as a consequence.

>Then qualia isn't a problem because we will eventually pass those limitations
Do you pray to Dawkins every day for this to be true? Nice leap of faith.

In fairness, posters on your side of the argument have been doing the same thing all thread.

I complained in answer to a few of those posts that they had no content for me to refute. Not to say there isnt an argument in there, and to those posters credit they eventually reached into their back pocket and came back with more substantive criticism. But I would still be very careful of hurling accusations of assertion without substance at our side.

Oh, I see. You're a post modernist; all truth is a construct of language or society?

I don't want to echo another poster here with whom I disagree, but your position is self defeating.

If the brain and all other truth is created by the mind, and all truth is relative, it follows that the truth that all truth is relative is itself relative.

Incidentally, the relative argument was advanced by a school of thought known as "sophism" in ancient greece and was convincingly repudiated by socrates; using exactly the same argument I use here, truth cannot be relative, or dependent on the mind that perceives it, because then the truth that truth is relative is itself relative, an absurdity.

>By damaging the brain, we can damage the mind.
You don't damage something that doesn't exist in the physical world.
>I don't grow lesions on my cerebellum every time i lose an argument.
This is a poor example.
You could say, I don't lose the ability to see colors without an actual physical reason like a stroke.
The contrary would imply a paranormal phenomenon.

you get raped by demons

brb comitting suicide while wearing mixed threads and eating shellfish after I convert to, and abandon, islam.

I never said that all truth is relative though. You're assuming that because the physical world is a construct of the mind it necessarily follows that each person constructs their own reality, which isn't true. We share an objective reality, formed through the collective efforts of all consciousness.

>This is a poor example.

Fair criticism. Was weary of this when I posted it, couldn't imagine something damaging my mind, an entity that doesnt actually exist. I thought maybe something like being raped may be thought to damage the mind, but I didnt think that worked either. The issue is, I think, that our side is right. There is no thing that can damage the mind, there is no such thing as a mind.

>You're assuming that because the physical world is a construct of the mind it necessarily follows that each person constructs their own reality, which isn't true

I really dont see how thats possible. Your mind is objectively different than mine. Ergo, you construct your own reality.

How can you get out of it? Reality cant be constructed from our shared conciousness, we dont share our conciousness, anymore than we share our livers, arms, or spines.

In a way, and this is not meant to be a flame, I reconsidered making this post, as I felt it gave your argument a respectability that it didnt deserve. Again, its nothing personal, I honestly think your position is that bad.

>How can you get out of it?
If I vote for one person and you vote for another does it mean that we split into two realities where each of the people we voted for win the election? If you're in a meeting is it impossible to work as a group because any solution you propose is unable to be accepted by others? A collective conscious process to 'create' the physical world is exactly that. You don't need a mental link with other people, it's a constant process of perception and mental revision which everything takes part in.

>Again, its nothing personal, I honestly think your position is that bad.

Understandable. I can see you're having serious trouble wrapping your head around it which is perfectly normal, this is high level stuff and hard to reconcile with average human experience.

>There is no thing that can damage the mind, there is no such thing as a mind.
I do acknowledge that there's no experience without brain counterpart.
But do you realize the actual red you see in this picture is something different from the tangle of neurons in your brain?
Come on.

>we dont share our conciousness
You don't know your own consciousness perfectly, so how can you be sure every one isn't the same one?

This is where I point out that modern physics implies there actually isn't any 'objective' reality at all.

youtube.com/watch?v=YycAzdtUIko

>baseless

BS, the situation is exactly the same as before life, the result is the same - claiming anything else is the baseless one.

Your body rots. Why wasn't this the first response?

I think the issue is what happens to the mind

DMT heaven dreams for a few seconds, possibly altered perception makes them seem to last for a very long time.

Once I smoked DMT when I was still a degenrerate and it seemed like hours even though it's relatively short. If your brain made a massive amount maybe the few minutes of dying seems like an eternity

the demons take the form of your favourite thing, so in your case it will be einstein and newton spitroasting your for eternity while sado-leatherqueen marie curie whips your back with a flaming nine tails. flying imps shaped like richard dawkings will be pelting you with little pellets of poo.

There's no argument that holds water for why the mind would exist separate from the brain. Prove me wrong.

>If your brain made a massive amount maybe the few minutes of dying seems like an eternity
I've thought about this too, but it's so ridiculous. What happens to the people who get their brains splattered everywhere? Do only people who die with theirs intact get to experience an ""afterlife""?

>There's no argument that holds water for why the mind would exist separate from the brain
You can rewire your physical brain by altering your mental state

That's called feedback, my man. Try again.